|
|
|
Map of Africa |
Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/04
Storm Clouds Over Sun City: The Urgent Need To Recast The Congolese Peace Process
May 2002
Abstract
After seven weeks of negotiations at Sun City, a partial agreement was reached on 19 April 2002 between Jean-Pierre Bemba's MLC (Mouvement pour la libération du Congo) and the government of Joseph Kabila. The agreement represents the end of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue in the context of the Lusaka peace accords. However confusion reigns. The negotiations are not complete and the future of the Democratic Republic of Congo remains uncertain.
The accord, struck by the majority of delegates from unarmed opposition groups and civil society, and approved by Angola, Uganda and Zimbabwe, is the beginning of a political realignment in the DRC conflict. Most notably it heralds the end of the anti-Kabila coalition and confirms the isolation of the RCD (Rassemblement congolais pour la Démocratie) and its ally Rwanda. The Kabila government and the MLC actually concluded the accord by default, due to the intransigence of the RCD on the question of power sharing in Kinshasa, and, in the background, the failed negotiations between the governments of the DRC and Rwanda over the disarmament of the Hutu rebels known as ALiR (Armée pour la libération du Rwanda). This accord transformed the discussions between the Lusaka signatories into a bilateral negotiation with a Kabila-Bemba axis backed by the international community on one side, and a politically weak RCD, backed by a militarily strong Rwanda on the other.
